


Coming Through the Fog

by matan4il



Series: Fics written for 911 fandom weeks [2]
Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Buddie First Kiss Week 2020, Fluff, Gay Pride, M/M, Pride
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24627676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/matan4il/pseuds/matan4il
Summary: But Pride isn’t an event for Buck.Written for Buddie First Kiss Week, for the prompt ‘related to Pride’.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Series: Fics written for 911 fandom weeks [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1818772
Comments: 28
Kudos: 150





	Coming Through the Fog

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the song ‘Let the River Run,’ (written and originally performed by Carly Simon, the video [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-maVmXW5Mio) is a cover by Boston Gay Men’s Choir), which was the theme song for my city’s first Pride event. Here’s some of the lyrics:
> 
> _We're coming to the edge  
>  Running on the water  
>  Coming through the fog  
>  Your sons and daughters _
> 
> _Let the river run  
>  Let all the dreamers  
>  Wake the nation  
>  Come, the New Jerusalem_
> 
> Thank you to the wonderful [Toughpaperround](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToughPaperRound/pseuds/ToughPaperRound) for the beta reading! 
> 
> Please do come say hi and find more awesome stuff at [my Tumblr](matan4il.tumblr.com/)!

But Pride isn’t an event for Buck.

The first one he ever saw, he pretended to be protesting against it. High school was rough to deal with when he knew he was different in an unaccepting community and his parents were rougher still. He’d heard about Pride and wanted to see what it was like, scary as it was to go anywhere near it under those circumstances. Those who were demonstrating against it supplied him with a solution of sorts, he could get close enough to watch the event, yet no one who might pass by would suspect him.

Or maybe, he didn’t want to just have a look at the parade, it could be he was searching for answers. After all, it was impossible not to have a few questions when he seemed to be the only one of his friends who, even from an early age, was thinking of kissing boys as well as girls. 

Pride was a chance to go and see whether it was true that, unlike what his immediate environment might have suggested, there were other people like him out there. It was a wave of fear and a small promise at once. A tiny promise, but he held onto it and used it to wade through the fear as he made his way amidst the crowd of protestors.

He got to a spot where he was standing on the sidelines of the pride parade and he watched. He watched the men, women and those he couldn’t easily classify as either adorned in beautiful, colorful clothes, in glitter and hugs, in joy and festivity. He saw them celebrating freedom. Embracing love. Even though it wasn’t his original goal, Buck also ended up watching those he came to stand with. Their faces contorted with anger and revulsion, with indignant hatred, as they shouted their opposition.

It struck him how asymmetrical the whole thing was in its very essence. One group was marching for itself, for its rights, for its ability to take up the same space in the public sphere that everyone else did with the same sort of dignity. They were marching for their lives. At the same time, the protesting group came there to try and control other people’s lives. He saw the difference and he took in the love on one side, the hate on the other and knew that he would never stand on the wrong side of the parade again.

But over the years, even after he had moved away from the community he grew up in and away from the parents he doubted could ever accept him, he never had an opportunity to attend Pride as one of its actual participants. To be honest, he didn’t actively try very hard, either. He only really settled long enough in one place to consider going to such an event after he started working with the 118, but the life of a firefighter was one that was daily being snatched away from the constant chaos and danger of the job, so year after year, he found that when Pride came around, he would note the date in his mind, but on the actual day, he was always unable to participate, either having to work, or needing the rest from it.

But then Eddie happened. And Chris. Not only entering his life, but becoming his family. And strangely enough, that happened first, He and Eddie became lovers only after that, but it made the transition all the more natural, like this was what they were always meant to be to each other. Now the joy of who they all get to be to each other is expanding in every part of Buck, from the second he wakes up in the morning, in Eddie’s arms, until he goes to sleep at night, after he’s read Christopher his bedtime story and they tucked him in together. Sometimes, he’s willing to swear on it, he can even feel this permeating his dreams. He’s happy and content and a boyfriend and a co-parent and loved to the point he almost doesn’t know what to do with it, he’s so unused to it. He has found his place in life and everyone around him knows and accepts it. He’s had to fight zero battles to be with Eddie and to practically adopt Chris.

Which some would suggest negates the need for Pride. Not for Buck, it doesn’t. On the contrary, he wants to attend more than ever. 

They’re their own unit together now, a rainbow family as some would call it, which he adores. And which he wants to protect. He wants it to be recognized as equal to everyone else’s. Where he needed to get away from his community and parents to get the space to be himself, he also realized he didn’t need their recognition. They had failed him enough times that their acceptance made little difference to him. But it’s not like that when it comes to his new, chosen family, he needs it to be seen as one whole and unique unit, if only to get the equal rights that it deserves and for the unique challenges it will encounter to be recognized in order to give it the protection it needs.

So Buck wants them to be there, together at Pride, as one family, marching for all that is dear to them. Eddie is a lot more hesitant. He’s not sure what difference these parades really make and he doesn’t particularly like the idea of Chris at such an event, with all the sights that they may come across there. If they have to go, he doesn’t quite get why the two of them can’t march for their family while their son is at home with Abuela. And this is maybe one of the best things about being with Eddie, that even in the middle of a tense discussion, he can still make Buck smile by so casually referring to Chris as theirs. Not that it makes him relent any, he brings up one argument after another, until he’s even dreaming up some extreme scenarios, like the possibility of an attack on the parade. “It’s happened before,” he insists. “In other countries there have even been murders of marchers at Pride events. We don’t know what could happen, like those men who were attacked after leaving San Diego Pride...”

“Fourteen years ago!” Buck grimaces.

Everything Eddie is saying is true and awful, making his case harder to argue. But no matter what, Buck’s gut is screaming how important it is for Chris to be there, for him to absorb the love and joy, to see the colorfulness and know that he’s a part of it, his own special stripe that the rainbow can’t be complete without. For him to never end up, not even for a second just in his mind, on the wrong side of the line that stretches between the marchers and their haters. 

“Eds,” Buck starts again, suddenly resolute, “let’s put all that aside, because we both know you’re exaggerating and Pride today, especially in Los Angeles, is safe. What are you going to do if one day Chris comes and tells us about a boy he wants to kiss?”

“I’ll tell him he’s too young to be kissing anyone.”

“Jerk,” he rolls his eyes, but can’t keep out the affection that underlines the curse word, “don’t pretend you missed what I mean. What if in addition to everything else, Chris will also have to deal with being different in this sense?”

“Then...” Eddie hesitates, “Well, I guess we’re going to have to see what to do about it then.”

“Maybe by then someone will already have said something ugly to him at school about having two dads. And maybe he’ll believe and internalize it. So by the time he realizes there’s another boy he likes, he’ll be too scared and too ashamed to be able to even tell us about it.”

Buck stops. The beautiful thing about Edmundo Diaz is that as stubborn as he can be at times, making it almost impossible to argue with him, there’s no end to how much he cares. If you convince him something is truly about the good of someone that he loves, he will change course, even where others less dogged than him would fail to.

Eddie’s obviously considering this scenario, his eyes absently scanning their bedroom and falling on a framed picture of Chris which Buck keeps by his bedside table. “You really think he might grow up ashamed of who we are?”

“He might. We have no way of predicting what’s going to happen. But if we do this, it can be like a preemptive strike, like a vaccine. We take him to Pride and we give him the answers to any questions he could have in advance. We show him how much beauty there is in a family like ours. That we’re not the only ones and he’s not alone, that all of these people, there’s nothing wrong with them. That there is a whole world out there,” Buck points out their bedroom window, “that looks like us, like his family, even if some people don’t know anything about it. We inoculate him against their hatred.”

Eddie can’t help his grin. “Inoculate, huh?”

Buck huffs out in amusement, then wriggles one eyebrow at him. “Admit it, you can’t resist me when I use big words like that.” And while he won’t say it out loud, he means that not only in the sexy sense.

“No, I guess I can’t,” Eddie chuckles softly and comes closer, slips his hands between Buck’s arms and his body, links them at the small of his back. “Alright, we’re all going to Pride.”

And that opens up an entirely different can of worms for Buck, because he insists he wants to prepare Chris for it, but how is he going to do that when he hasn’t been to Pride himself? His first idea is for them to watch a YouTube video together of a librarian reading out a children’s book about Pride, This Day in June. Chris takes to it and they end up watching the short clip more times than Buck thought was humanly possible, not that he’d ever admit it to Eddie when he gets teased about it.

He also spends an inordinate amount of time choosing their outfits for the day. “T-shirt and jeans,” Eddie groans. “What’s there to think about?”

“We have to make a good impression,” Buck insists, “and I want Chris to fit in.” The problem is, of course, it’s hard to anticipate what might fit in at a Pride event. He ends up going through every outfit in their closet and ignores Eddie, who’s snickering at the irony of the rejected clothes being shoved back in there. 

Eventually, his boyfriend takes an outfit for Chris that Buck’s been examining for the 538th time and puts it aside. “Weren’t you the one who said that Pride is about acceptance? Then relax, he’ll fit in no matter what he wears.”

And yeah, this must be one of the reasons why Buck still keeps Eddie around.

That doesn’t mean that the morning of the event isn’t a festival of nerves. Buck has them on a tight schedule that he prepared in advance, so and so minutes for waking up, for getting dressed, for breakfast and nope, no time for a second coffee, no matter how much Eddie needs it, though no worries, the parade will jolt everyone into wakefulness and only so much fussing over styling his own hair, which is a shame since it’s his fault for not slotting more time for that.

With enough fuss and car singing on the way there, they finally get there. And it’s beautiful. It’s everything Buck remembered from his awkward, scared, closeted high school days and more. Maybe because this is Los Angeles and this Pride is bigger than anything his hometown could ever dream to have. Maybe because enough time has passed that even more diversity is included in this parade than what he could have witnessed back then. But most likely it’s because of who he’s doing this with. He’s included, not just as an individual, but as part of this family that he’s so profoundly proud to have.

Because Pride is not just an event to Buck, it’s an emotion that strums his heart and flows along his skin, it’s how much bigger his love is than his own body can contain and how much joy he can share with the two people who mean the most to him in the world when none of them can stop smiling. Their shirts are already half covered with stickers and one woman had offered to cover Christopher’s cheeks with rainbow-colored glitter. It’s only just started, but it’s more than enough for Buck to feel more fulfilled than he thought he would be. This is a celebration of what back in high school he could never have dreamed would be the best thing to ever happen to him. He watches the lady hovering over Chris’ face and pulls Eddie to him, grinning his happiness into the kiss they’re about to share, their first one ever at Pride.


End file.
